Alice groaned.

Everything hurt. For a brief moment she considered just letting Rita take over and nodding off for a bit, but she was still raging incoherently in her brain, so she’d probably just get them killed.

During her hasty flight up the stairway, she hadn’t really taken the time to look around. Now, lying on the floor in pain after having crawled through a window and not really up to moving around much, she could take everything in properly.

She was inside an apartment, in what she assumed was an apartment building. The internal walls had a couple of large holes in them, but she could clearly see where the seperations between the different flats had once been. The room she was in at present had been a rather nice lounge before whatever had happened here, tastefully decorated with modern-style furniture that had probably been pretty pricey, once upon a time.

Now they were junk. Piles of mouldering fabric and rotten wood.

She was surprised to see a flatscreen TV that looked comparatively whole, despite its screen being completely shattered.

Glass crunched beneath heavy footsteps from the direction of the stairwell.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, those monsters upstairs weren’t just going to let her go. Why? Why not just leave her alone? For that matter, why was Rita so insistent that she try to kill them? It was fucking suicide!

She tried to stagger to her feet despite the pain. Her stomach was pure agony and had her doubling over in pain. Inspection revealed several glass shards embedded in her flesh and a growing pool of crimson where she had collapsed.

Shit, she was bleeding, badly, and she hadn’t even realized.

Alice stumbled away, trying to put as much distance between herself and where she had come through the window, heading through the neighbouring apartment while trying to staunch the blood flow with her raggedy sweater.

It had to have happened while she had crawled through the window. Hanging by her upper body had surely exacerbated the situation. Several other cuts and scrapes were also bleeding, but she must have been so hopped up on adrenaline that she hadn’t even felt them. Now, she was starting to worry that she was losing too much blood.

“Shit” Alice swore as she glanced over her shoulder. She was leaving a trail of bloody droplets as she stumbled along, which would lead her pursuers directly from the window she entered by to wherever she hid.

Gingerly she pulled off the remnants of her sweater, revealing the somewhat ragged remains of the shirt she’d worn underneath. Both appeared to have been equally torn up during the fight on the roof, but the shirt hadn’t been in great shape to start with. Now it was just barely decent.

Not that Alice cared. Survival trumped modesty any day of the week in her book. She suspected Rita might have cared, but she was busy screaming in her head about chewing off their larynxes or something equally violent. Alice had stopped paying attention a while ago.

She pressed the sweater tightly against her midriff, hissing at the agony of it. In hindsight she should perhaps have removed the glass first, but the first priority was hiding, and that meant not removing anything that could be preventing her from bleeding more than she already was.

Bleeding temporarily halted, she ducked off to the side through an open bathroom door and collapsed into the only somewhat clean bath, hoping that she’d not left a trail.

Very carefully she started pulling out the shards of glass. They were smaller than she thought, but they had nevertheless torn her up pretty badly. Most likely from all the moving around. Still, the wounds were relatively shallow so with a bit of luck she wouldn’t die from bloodloss or sepsis, not that there was much she could do about either of those at this point.

Footsteps outside her bathroom made her freeze… then the footsteps stopped, and her heart sank.

There was nowhere left for her to go. She’d cornered herself, true, but she hadn’t had much of a choice. Her options were finding somewhere to hide or collapsing from blood loss.

The Knight and the Demon were right outside the door, talking in that same weird language. Any moment they were going to come inside and find her…

Gora didn’t like this. Not at all. The deeper they went and the longer they followed the trail, the more uneasy she became.

“The trail stops up ahead” Samual said as he carefully picked his way through the structure next to her. Splitting up was a good way to get picked off.

“No. Drop of blood over there” Gora replied and pointed at the small stain off to the side, barely even visible. The new trail lead to what Gora was reasonably sure was just a small, closed room, based on what she could see.

“I’ll take care of it” Samual said and made as if to step towards the doorway, until Gora grabbed his shoulder..

“Stop. Something’s not right” she growled, eyes scanning the area intently.

Samual raised an eyebrow at her and for a moment she thought he was going to shake her off and ignore her warning. She would have let him go, too. It was her job to guide, not to baby the kids. Learning from your mistakes was all well and good, but learning from others’ mistakes, now that was an opportunity she wouldn’t deny herself.

But then he stepped back, warily watching the darkness beyond the open doorway.

“What’s not right?” he asked, scepticism clear on his face.

“It ran. It saw us yet it pulled back. Why?” she asked.

“It realized it couldn’t win?” Samual guessed, but Gora shook her head.

“No, that doesn’t matter. Nightmare creatures never flee. And they only ever withdraw if they’re trying to lure you into a trap. The odds of victory are irrelevant.”

“So, what’s the trap?” Samual asked, glancing around.

“That’s the problem” Gora replied. “I can’t see it.”

“You can’t see it?”

“I can’t see how it can turn this environment to its advantage, but it’s an enclosed, cramped space. I don’t like it” she stated.

They stood staring at the doorway in silence for a while.

“Come on” Gora sighed eventually. “We’re leaving.”

“Leaving? Its injured and cornered. Aren’t we going to finish it?” Samual protested.

“No. We’re losing control of the situation. We leave. If it follows us, it leaves its prepared ground and we kill it easily. If it doesn’t…” Gora shrugged. “Then who cares. It’s no threat to us and we don’t even know what Essence it gives. Might be worthless.”

“Might be worth a fortune” Samual countered.

“Dead men don’t get to spend money.”

Gora turned and headed back to the stairwell. Samual stared at the doorway for a few moments more before making up his mind and following behind her.

The spider creature could keep its secrets. For now.

“Found anything?” Ava asked when they eventually got back outside.

“Just this” Gora replied, handing her a broken television remote. The front panel with the buttons appeared to have been ripped off, leaving jagged scratches in the exposed green circuit board.

“A Tronic!” Ava grinned, eagerly grabbing it like a child receiving candy.

“I noticed it on the way out and figured I’d grab it” Gora explained when Samual gave her a questioning look.

“Oh, you haven’t searched the place yet?” Ava asked while removing the plastic housing around the circuit board and casually tossing it away.

Samual shook his head, an uncharacteristically cheeky grin on his face. “No. Something’s still in there. Gave Gora the willies.”

Gora snorted but didn’t rise to the bait. “It worth anything?” she asked instead.

“Mmm… I’m getting something, but its faint.” Ava replied, the green board clasped in her hands. “Might be strong enough to manifest an effect with a bit of tinkering, but we’ll need to get it back to the city to know for sure.” Then she turned to Samual. “Were you serious? Something scared Gora? I didn’t realize she was able to feel fear. What was it?”

“Some kind of spider thing. Human size” Samual added when Ava raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Gora, you’re afraid of spiders?” Ava asked, eyes sparkling with delight.

Gora just turned and fixed her with a flat stare.

“Is that a yes or a no? I’m not fluent in glare” Ava asked Samual from the corner of her mouth.

“I suppose this implies we will not be collecting the remainder of the Arcane Essence from inside the building, nor scouring it for more Tronics?” Zaxear asked from where he was still lounging in his basket on Bob’s back, paws folded over the young man’s shoulder.

Gora shook her head as she started walking back to where they’d left their gear. “There aren’t a lot of bodies left in there, and the place looked pretty decrepit. Doubt there’s much of anything. It’s not worth it. Let’s just move on, I’m hoping to find a Campsite soon.”

As she headed off and the others fell in behind her, Ava sidled up to Samual. Not too close, mind you.

“Spill it. What really happened in there? From the start” she whispered.

Samual sighed. This was such a waste of time. “We followed the sound of several Masked running up the stairs…”